The Democratic National Committee has launched a fundraising operation in protest of the Trump administration’s arrest of narco-terrorist Nicolas Maduro.
DNC fundraising against the Maduro arrest pic.twitter.com/R4QHkG3q4h
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) January 3, 2026
“Another day, another unconstitutional war from Trump, who thinks the Constitution is a suggestion,” the email read. “Congress has war powers — but Republican cowards are hiding under their desks while Trump orders an unauthorized attack against Venezuela. Trump promised peace, but has delivered chaos.”
“The most important thing we can do is elect more Democrats who will check this administration’s power,” the email continued.
The email was sent the same morning that President Donald Trump ordered the arrest of Nicolas Maduro for a litany of crimes. No U.S. servicemembers were killed, and no equipment was lost in the raid, Trump announced in a press conference following Maduro’s capture.
DNC Chairman Ken Martin also released a statement coinciding with the fundraising push, claiming that the Trump administration has acted illegally and is betraying his base. Martin’s statement further argued that the raid would leave the American taxpayer to foot the bill.
My full statement on Trump’s unconstitutional military operations in Venezuela: pic.twitter.com/rcieGbPylh
— Ken Martin (@kenmartin73) January 3, 2026
Trump directly contradicted these claims in the same press conference earlier in the morning, stating, “it won’t cost us anything because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial.”
“We’re gonna take back the oil, that frankly, we should’ve taken back a while ago,” Trump continued. “We’re gonna get reimbursed for everything that we spend.”
The decision to take oil assets from the Venezuelan state is in response to the 1976 nationalization of the Venezuelan oil industry, where international oil corporations had their assets seized to create the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., according to CNBC.
Trump also said the raid was well aligned with the America First agenda.
.@POTUS: "We want to surround ourself with good neighbors. We want to surround ourself with stability. We want to surround ourself with energy... we need that for ourselves, we need that for the world—and we want to make sure we can protect it." pic.twitter.com/6qlVe6TqJo
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) January 3, 2026
While Martin claims that the decision to arrest Maduro was a “last-ditch effort to hold on to power and relevancy,” the irony of attempting to raise money from it apparently escaped him.